مشروع التعليم التعاوني والتعليم عن بعد على الانترنت

اول  مشروع عربي يرشح  لجائزة استكهولم الدولية 

في مجال التعليم التعاوني والتعليم عن بعد باستخدامات الوسائط المتعددة وبرمجيات التعاون الكتروني على الانترنت

http://www.owcp.net 

 اهداف المشروع .....

What is Online Writing Collaboration Project (OWCp)?

Online Writing Collaboration Project (OWCp) was founded in 2000. It has been created to be the meeting place on cyberspace for English learners and instructors from all over the globe. OWCp main mission is to create and maintain an online community of English learners and instructors and to connect this online community with English native speakers to promote an accessible and inclusive collaboration to create authentic interactive learning environment with the target culture.

OWCp is based on collaboration theories, and thus it is a two-way interaction, in which EFL learners can share and discuss their writings with classmates & American peers, and also they receive comprehensive feedback from qualified online tutors who volunteered to help Arab EFL learners. This simply means that students participating in OWCp get feedback on their writings from both native and nonnative writers before they turn in their written products to their instructor.

Those online tutors (In-service & Pre-service teachers) are highly prepared to work with the kinds of writing problems ESOL learners normally encounter. Those online tutors who work with OWCp members are given the opportunity to practice and apply online teaching with their future students. More importantly they get the benefit of interacting with many people from different cultures and that is according to them widen their understanding of the outside world.

 

OWCp Main Goals:  

 

1. Bakhtin emphasizes that all written discourse is unfinished social dialogue. Therefore, OWCp main mission is to engage readers (here, tutors) into dialogue with writers (here, ESOL Students) to construct knowledge.  

2. To improve ESOL learners English writing through Online Tutorial Writing Lessons 

3. To motivate students to write in English and share their writing with real audience. OWCp creates audience awareness, reduces stress associated with writing, and also creates positive attitudes towards learning in general due to the online collaboration nature.

4. To create cross cultural communication channels through the synchronous (Real Time) Live Collaboration.. This will provide Live Writing Tutoring to students , and more importantly connect them with people from the target language culture.

5. To Provide ESOL teachers from all over the globe with a virtual meeting place on cyberspace to share teaching ideas, successful teaching experiences, lesson plans, teaching materials, all for the sake of better English teaching and better English learning.

OWCp advantages as English Collaborative learning community on the Internet   

1. OWCp main mission is to engage English learners from non English speaking countries (Arab English learners in particular) into dialogue with native speakers from USA and Europe to construct knowledge    and to facilitate authentic interactive learning through web-based discussions.

2. OWCp improves ESOL learners’ English writing through Online Tutorial Writing Lessons

3. OWCp motivates students to write in English and share their writing with real audience from different cultural and religious backgrounds. 

4. OWCp creates audience awareness, reduces stress associated with writing, and creates positive attitudes towards collaborative learning in general due to the online collaboration nature it extends to learners.

5. OWCp creates cross-cultural communication channels through the  synchronous (Real Time) Live Collaboration. This provides Live Writing Tutoring to students, and more importantly connect them with people from the target language culture through both web-based discussions forums and audio-video conferencing.

6. OWCp provides English teachers from all over the globe with a virtual meeting place on cyberspace to share teaching ideas, successful teaching experiences, lesson plans, teaching materials, all for the sake of constructing better English teaching and better English learning bases in the Arab World.

7. OWCp provides teachers and students of English with authentic up-to-date materials with include English software, English writing process e-books, and other miscellaneous teaching and learning materials.

8. OWCp helps both English learners and teachers with any kind of technical problems and it also conducts online workshops to educate members on the different possible ways of making full use of computer and internet applications as English teaching and learning tools. 

OWCp benefits for EFL writers

OWCP has many benefits for EFL writers in particular.

1.      OWCp helps students construct, discover, and transform knowledge as they interact with each other through web-based discussion forums and chat rooms.

2.      OWCp increases learners' self-confidence in their written & spoken language.

3.      OWCp develops positive student-teacher attitudes and relationships.

4.      OWCp creates positive attitudes towards English writing in particular and English learning in general.

5.      OWCp allows shy students to participate in and write more, due to the nature of online writing   that facilities multiple identities and protract learners' privacy.

6.      OWCp promotes gender equity in online discussion. This has encouraged many female members from Middle East to participate more often and many cases they become the group leaders, and moderators.

7.      OWCp facilitates authentic communication through real live conferencing that takes place in OWCp among learners from middle east and American peers. In these live conferencing, audio, video and text features are all enabled to create rich interactive atmosphere for Arab to practice English in a likelihood natural setting.

8.      OWCp creates Reading/Writing connection environment. It integrates audio, video, and text altogether to help learners listen to what is being read to speed their reading skills and help them hear loudly what is being read so their pronunciation gets sold and precise more discussions are created to discuss. 

9.      OWCp encourages students to write and share writing in a collaborative setting.

10.  OWCp creates audience awareness as they write and they have their readers in mind and that helps them to address the readers as they become more knowledgeable about their thinking and their way perceiving things.

11.  OWCp teaches students the art of trading and exchanging feedback. Students become knowledge constructors as they also give feedback to their online peers and thus they become involved with the text in a direct manner. 

12.   OWCp online interactive learning helps to reduce stress associated with writing. That is bayous in the number of posts written in the English writing Fun club due to the fact that students write freely about anything they experience and more importantly they will not be graded about their writings in this section.

OWCp Discussion Forums' Characteristics

1. In OWCp, learners collaborate with each other, exchange resources and above all, tutors (English native speakers and teachers) coach EFL learners to construct their own knowledge about English writing in unstressed environment.

2. OWCp forums' interactive discussion promotes English learners' critical thinking due to its nature that enables learners to actively read and write in a circular process.

3. In OWCp forums, students access multiple perspectives about their writing in one place. This positively enhances their writing and makes them envision their writing and their own culture from the other online peers' perspectives' point of view that goes beyond their own initial observation.

4. OWCp discussion forums make students more confident about what they write. The powerful design of the forums makes English learners' writing rich and thorough. As a result, their peers' reflection always empower them with more inputs of other learners, tutors and even professors who "ALL" have equal opportunities to express themselves in the online collaborative learning environment.

5. OWCp aims to be English learners' life long learning place. It aims to fulfill English learners' writing needs by providing them unlimited support to solve their writing problems, tutorial lessons, live collaboration with tutors.

6. In OWCp forums, threaded discussions enhance learners' higher order thinking as they are engaged in collaborative activities and as they become the doers and the knowledge formers rather than merely being the knowledge takers as always in the traditional learning environment.

7. Teachers and tutors have full access to the forums control panel so they can customize their class's activities the way it best meet their classes requirements and students needs.

8. In OWCP forums, teachers can invite guests such as a text author, a figure in their field to address issues to their students' interests.

9. In OWCp forums, students may use "emoticons" to express their feelings while responding to each other to make their collaborative activities more enjoyable and meaningful.

10. OWCp forums enables students respond at anytime and from anyplace to their peers' writing in an un-intimidated manner.

11. OWCp forums is empowered with advanced features in such a way that instructors, moderators and students can for example embed flash cards, audio clips, video clips, diagrams, images, slideshows, Web-based PowerPoint presentations, and many other medias to facilitate learning process and make it more motivational to learners.

For further information please do not hesitate to contact me. You may e-mail me or contact me through the LIVE HELP Section in the project 

Meteab M. AlZahrani
OWCp Founder, Developer & Administrator
Indiana University of Pennsylvania
English Department
Ph.D Candidate, ABD
meteab@owcp.net

Area of expertise and interests

• Computer Assistant Language Learning (CALL)
• Computer Supported Collaborative Writing (CSCW)
• Distance Learning. (DL)
• Online Collaborative Teaching & Learning (OCTL)
• Networking & Collaborative writing applications
• E-reading and its electronic applications